Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (May 16, 1804 – January 3, 1894) was an American
educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United
States. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that
children's play has intrinsic developmental and educational value.

Peabody also served as the translator for the first English version of a
Buddhist scripture which was published in 1844.

Peabody was born in Billerica, Massachusetts on May 16, 1804. She was the
daughter of Nathaniel Peabody, a physician, and Elizabeth ("Eliza") Palmer
(1778-1853), and spent her early years in Salem.

After 1822, she resided principally in Boston where she engaged in
teaching.[1]
She also became a writer and a prominent figure in the Transcendental
movement. During 1834–1835, she worked as assistant teacher to Amos Bronson
Alcott at his experimental Temple School in Boston. After the school closed,
Peabody published Record of a School, outlining the plan of the school
and Alcott's philosophy of early childhood education, which had drawn on
German models.

She later opened a book store, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's West Street
Bookstore, at her home in Boston (ca.1840-1852).[2][3][4][5]

It was there that the "Conversations" were held, organized by Margaret
Fuller. The first of these meetings between women was held on November 6,
1839.[6]
Topics for these discussions and debates varied but subjects were as diverse
as fine arts, history, mythology, literature, and nature.[7]
Fuller served as the "nucleus of conversation" and hoped to answer the "great
questions" facing women: "What were we born to do? How shall we do it? which
so few ever propose to themselves 'till their best years are gone by".[8]
Many figures in the woman's rights movement took part, including Sophia Dana
Ripley, Caroline Sturgis,[9]
and Maria White Lowell.[6]

The 1840 Catalogue of the Foreign Library offered several hundred
titles in German, French, Spanish, Italian and English languages.

In 1852, the bookstore and library located at 13-15 West Street in Boston
closed down. Members of the Transcendentalist movement had begun to disperse
since the mid-1840s and income from the bookstore had gradually declined. In
2011, the Boston Landmarks Commission designated the building as a Boston
Landmark.

For a time, Peabody was the business manager of The Dial, the main
publication of the Transcendentalists. In 1843, she noted that the journal's
income was not covering the cost of printing and that subscriptions totaled
just over two hundred. In 1844 the magazine published Peabody's translation of
a portion of the Lotus Sutra from French, which was the first English version
of a Buddhist scripture.[16][17]
The publication ceased shortly thereafter in April 1844.[18]

When Peabody opened her kindergarten in 1860, the practice of providing
formal schooling for children younger than six was largely confined to
Germany. She had a particular interest in the educational methods of Friedrich
Fröbel, particularly after meeting one of his students living in the U.S. 1859
named Margarethe Schurz. In 1867, she visited Germany for the purpose of
studying Fröbel's teachings more closely.[19]
Through her own kindergarten, and as editor of the Kindergarten Messenger
(1873–1877), Peabody helped establish kindergarten as an accepted institution
in American education. She also wrote numerous books in support of the cause.
The extent of her influence is apparent in a statement submitted to Congress
on February 12, 1897, in support of free kindergartens.

With grounding in history and literature and a reading knowledge of ten
languages, in 1840 she also opened a bookstore which held Margaret Fuller's
"Conversations" and published books from
Nathaniel
Hawthorne and others in addition to the periodicals The Dial and
Æsthetic Papers. She was an advocate of antislavery and of
Transcendentalism. Moreover, she also led decades of efforts for the rights of
the Paiute Indians.